UFO Laid to Rest At Last: Anders' Celestial Double Nine Patch Quilt, 2003-2012

Anders' "Celestial Double Nine Patch," 2003-2012

Have you ever come back to a quilt nine years later to finish it up?  That's what I did yesterday and today with this double nine patch quilt.  I "finished" it the month that Anders was born, and it was his baby quilt.  It has probably been through the wash at least 30 times, and all of the metallic accents in the fabric have long since washed away.  This quilt has been folded up in my son's closet for several years now, but I decided to take it out and add some free motion quilting to it for two reasons.  First, I always thought it needed more quilting, but I just didn't feel up to the challenge and was afraid I'd mess up and ruin the quilt back in 2003.  Now that the quilt has served its purpose and lives in a closet full time, those fears didn't seem so insurmountable after all. 

To recap, the diagonal grid quilting and the decorative motifs in the centers of the alternate blocks were both quilted in 2003, using a walking foot for the grid and a digitized quilting motif stitched "in the hoop" with my embroidery module.  I added the squiggly back-and-forth free motion quilting around the decorative motifs, to fill in dead space as well as just to get some more free motion practice under my belt before going back to Lars's "Drunken Dragons" quilt.  I think I will be able to use the back-and-forth squiggle quilting in the corners of the drunkard's path blocks, so stay tuned to see how that turns out in the next day or two.

Meanwhile, I'm linking up to Amy Lou Who's Show & Tell Friday.  It feels good to have finished something this week!